Middle Eastern Realities

Is Herman Cain the Answer?

Whenever I see the inane bumper sticker War Is Not
the Answer, I always think: That depends on what the question is. If
Roosevelt had answered the real question posed to him by the Japanese 70 years
ago according to the bumper sticker, then the idiot who pasted the sticker on
his bumper would likely not have had the freedom to do so. If the Israelis had
answered the actual question posed to them by Nasser in May 1967 according to
the bumper sticker, there would be no Israel today. Similarly, the answer to the
query in the title depends on the exact question.

The short form of the question is obviously: Who
should the Republicans nominate to oppose Obama in 2012? For me — a staunch
conservative — the long and much more important and meaningful form of the
question is formulated as follows:

The US has been listing left for a hundred years,
drifting away from a constitutional Republic devoted to individual liberty, free
markets and limited government by the consent of the governed toward a statist
society of forced equality, shared economic misery and unlimited, unresponsive
government. Following a brief (and temporary) course correction under Reagan, we
have continued our inexorable slide toward socialistic oblivion under the two
Bushes, Clinton and especially under Obama. There have been signs in the last
two years that a significant percentage of the electorate has finally awakened
to the existence of the cliff toward which we are speeding. The next election
provides a chance — perhaps the final chance — to irrevocably halt the mad
dash to the edge and then to restore America back to its original
political/cultural roots and traditions. Is Herman Cain the Moses we so
desperately seek to lead us back to the promised land?

The odds may be slim, but I believe that the United
States has the opportunity to effect a fundamental course correction next year.
It is possible that the people might elect a truly conservative President and
supply him with a sufficiently conservative Congress so that together they could
halt the leftward drift and set the country on a more traditional course. It may
be that enough of the electorate is actually ready to bring this about. Reagan
would have done it a generation ago, but he lacked the requisite companion
Congress and the people had not sufficiently awakened to the gravity of the
progressive threat. Today the conditions are more ripe.

One thing is clear: Mitt Romney is not Moses. Of
course he would be immeasurably better than Obama. But it is absolutely certain
that he desires to be president not in order to answer the question in the form
that I posed it. While his instincts might be more conservative than liberal,
Romney is a “big government Republican,” another Bush or McCain, who:

has no appreciation for the perilous course that our
nation has traveled in the 20thcentury;

thinks that Obama pushed the wrong levers rather than
sought to radically transform the nature of the country;

and who will do no more than briefly arrest the
country’s mad dash to the left, while leaving intact the socialist
infrastructure to be further ratcheted up by the next Social Democrat that
succeeds him.

Make no mistake — there are people out there who
understand the perilous state in which we find ourselves and who might formulate
and implement a program to rescue the nation. People like Jim DeMint or Mike
Pence come to mind. Paul Ryan perhaps. But they are not running. Who among those
actually running might be our Moses? As I said, Romney definitely is not. And
the people know it. That’s why, despite his advantage in experience,
organization, money and recognition, he can’t break away from the pack. Who then
is the answer? Certainly not Huntsman — another faux conservative. Not Paul —
an extreme libertarian whose opinions on national security and social morality
are frightening.

That leaves five: Bachmann, Cain, Gingrich, Perry and
Santorum. In fact, I believe that each of those five understands the horrible
drift of the country over the last century and would be determined to reverse
it. So which of them should be Moses? Well, none of them is a perfect redeemer.
And our American Idol style of selecting a nominee has exposed the warts in each
of them. Santorum is severely damaged goods. His overwhelming loss in his Senate
re-election run in 2008 makes him a sure loser. No one is taking him seriously;
his poll numbers are anemic; he would do us a favor by joining Pawlenty on the
sidelines. When the Idol process began, Bachmann raced to the front. But then,
apparently due to her relative inexperience and her permanent “deer in the
headlights” facial expression, the ardor for her cooled. Next to streak to the
front was Rick Perry. But his feeble performance in several Idol rounds knocked
him off the pedestal. Gingrich’s numbers have not oscillated up and down like
the previous two. In fact, he is clearly the sharpest tack in the bunch, but his
track record of quixotic behavior and moral ambiguity gives pause. And so that
leaves the Hermanator (a term that Cain uses for himself in his 2005 book).
People like him and for the moment at least, he has leapt to the front of the
Idol polls.

So what about Herman? Can he play the role of Moses?
He has no money, no organization and no political experience. And there is
something about him that suggests political naïveté. But his heart and, more
importantly, his head seem to be in the right place. I just finished reading the
2005 book, which he wrote following his unsuccessful run for the Senate from
Georgia in 2004. I believe that he understands what has happened to the country
and would work assiduously to bring about a course correction that conservatives
so fervently desire. Does he have the gravitas to pull it off? The last
non-politician that the country elected president was Eisenhower — who only
commanded the most formidable army in the history of the world. Somehow CEO of
Godfather’s Pizza doesn’t quite match up. But let us not forget that Reagan was
president of the Screen Actors Guild and Lincoln’s resume wasn’t all that
impressive either.

The dispatching of Obama and his replacement by a
committed conservative is a paramount task for our nation. The choice we have
for the leader who is to accomplish that task is limited to Romney and one of
Bachmann, Cain, Gingrich or Perry. Romney might defeat Obama, but it will not
herald the transformation that we seek. I believe that there is a reasonable
chance that any of the latter four, if given the spear of leadership, might be
up to the task. If Cain turns out to be the Idol selection, then I will support
him enthusiastically and pray that he can deliver. Personally, I prefer Perry
for reasons that I outlined in another
article in this journal. But if the Hermanator gets the nod, then on the
basis of what I have seen and read thus far, I can live with that and I will
vote for him optimistically.

Who is Barack Obama?

There are so many things the public does not know
about the man who sits in the White House. Who is Barack Obama? In my search
to find out the answers I embarked on a journey that has lasted three years and
counting — and nearly made my head explode.

As usual, when Obama is the subject, Americans can’t
count on the progressives in the Corporate Mainstream Media (CMM) for much
help. So, what’s one to do? The foreign press proved helpful. Therefore,
gleaned from the foreign press: a few stories which didn’t rate any coverage
from the U.S. CMM.

In 2005, then-Senator Barack Obama went on a mission
to Russia with Senator Richard Lugar (R-IN). The newly-minted U.S. senator was
invited to be part of a Russian fact-finding tour that inspected a nuclear
weapons site in Perm, Siberia. The base Lugar and Obama visited was where
mobile launch missiles were being destroyed under the Cooperative Threat
Reduction program (CTR), which also went by the name of the Nunn-Lugar
program.

What happened next — after the inspections were over
— was at the time reported by several foreign news sources but was never
reported in the USA by the CMM. The Russians detained Obama and Lugar for three
hours at the airport, demanding to examine both Obama’s and Lugar’s passports
and search their plane. Some sources reported that the Russians accused Barack
Obama of being a spy.

But wait — there’s more!

According to an Italian source, the Russians did not
accuse Obama of being an American spy; they accused him of being a spy for the
British! The report went on to say that the incident ended up involving the
White House, the U.S. State Department, and military officials, along with their
counterparts in Moscow.

Strangely enough, an official report from Lugar’s
office about the trip never mentioned the incident. Neither did Barack Obama in
2008 when he was desperate to exhibit some foreign policy
chops.

One other oddity: in the fall of 2008, Obama admitted
on his Fightthesmears.com site that he had held dual citizenship with both the
United States and Great Britain (the site explained that this was due to Barack
Obama, Sr. being a foreign national) until 1982. Did the Russians know
something about Obama’s citizenship in 2005 that ordinary Americans don’t know
in 2011?

Another story no one has seen fit to ask about:
Obama’s Most Excellent Pakistani Adventure.

In the summer of 1981, 20-year-old Barack Obama
embarked on a two-week trip to Pakistan. At least what little reporting that
has been done claimed the length of the trip was two weeks. The only proof that
the trip didn’t turn into a longer stay is that we (supposedly) have records
which show that Barack Obama enrolled at Columbia University later that same
summer. Of course, the public hasn’t seen those records, but that’s what we’ve
been told. Anyone in doubt will be directed to Obama’s autobiography,Dreams from My Father.

Obama clearly gave the impression in DFMF that he was
this penniless, somewhat confused young man, in search of an identity. Obama
makes sure readers don’t miss the point by writing that he was forced to wear
“thrift store clothing” during this time. Yet he somehow managed to find the
cash to finance a two-week trip to Pakistan.

Which he never wrote about. Which in itself is odd:
here’s a guy who wrote two autobiographies that explored events real, imagined,
and totally fictional that supposedly forged the modern-day Barack Obama from
humble beginnings. That’s according to the Obama NarrativeTM —
which gets most of its facts from Dreams from My
Father.

Not only did a poor, nearly destitute Obama manage to
afford the trip to Pakistan, but once there he somehow financed two weeks in the
Lahore Hilton International. In addition, Obama was introduced to the future
prime minister and president of Pakistan — and went bird-hunting with him.
Which the prime minister mentioned in the Pakistani press in 2008. There’s so
much more, including one question the CMM never asked Obama: who arranged all of
this? For a 20-year-old nobody.

Another curious piece to the queer Obama puzzle is the
connection — which hasn’t been made in the CMM (attention, Fox News!) —
between illegal foreign contributions to the Obama campaign and subsequent
billions in Stimulus money to foreign companies and banks. During and after the
2008 election, accusations of illegal foreign contributions — which flowed into
the Obama campaign when credit card safeguards were disabled on the campaign’s
website — were documented in the conservative press and
elsewhere.

Who were these mysterious donors, and in what
countries did they live? Unfortunately, due to the chicanery of Team Obama, we
may never know. Fast-forward to 2009. Obama’s multi-billion-dollar Stimulus is
rushed through Congress, and billions of dollars in Stimulus money are doled out
to foreign companies and banks. Finland, China, Brazil, and India are just a
few of the beneficiaries of Americans’ hard-earned tax dollars. Might these have
been payoffs for those shady, unknown donations?

Bill Clinton was the first president to benefit from a
foreign spoils system, but Barack Obama has made Clinton look like an
amateur.

One more coincidence in shady fundraising. The lady
involved with Obama’s fundraising in the Caribbean? None other than Vera Baker,
who packed up and hurried left the country after the National Enquirer
started exploring a possible tryst between her and Obama in a Washington
hotel.

Barack Obama can only hope that ObamaCare covers
“extreme stress” — because whoever on his staff is responsible for keeping
track of all of the weird stuff in the president’s life is definitely a
candidate for burnout.

One final item involves that most elusive of
documents: Obama’s long-lost long-form birth certificate.

A Chicago-area activist, Sherman Skolnick, writing for
a radio show/website (now defunct) by the name of Cloak and Dagger uncorked this
headline on his readers. It referred to another story he’d written in 2005 —
three years before anyone in the media coined the term “birther” to tamp down
curiosity about our 44th president’s past. (All-caps headline in the
original story.)

The U.S. Department of Justice is becoming a wing of the Muslim Brotherhood. The Obama administration is bowing to Muslim Brotherhood-linked groups and stopping the use of all training materials for law enforcement and national security officials that refer to jihad and any and all references to Islam. Yet Anwar al-Awlaki was a devout imam who preached the Quran. So let me understand this: Obama executed Awlaki for preaching jihad. That was all he did. Awlaki did not kill anyone. And yet Obama orders law enforcement to drop all mention of jihad and the Islamic motivation of terrorists. What’s the difference?

Why did he kill Awlaki?

The Justice Department held a seminar last week on “Confronting Discrimination in the Post 9-11 Era.” Among the treacherous conspirators indoctrinating believers and non-believers was the notorious Jew-hating pollster James Zogby and the ghastly leader of the Muslim Brotherhood-tied Islamic Society of North America (ISNA), Mohammed Magid.

James Lafferty, a board member of my organization, the American Freedom Defense Initiative (AFDI), was there and reported: “Speaker after speaker recited anecdote after anecdote which demonstrated that, except for the Justice Department, law enforcement is conspiring with ‘bigoted’ Americans to suspend the First Amendment protections of religious expression and free speech.”

The DOJ promised to fight that “bigotry” by changing training materials designed to help law enforcement officials understand the jihad threat. Dwight Holton, the U.S. attorney in Oregon, said: “I want to be perfectly clear about this: Training materials that portray Islam as a religion of violence or with a tendency toward violence are wrong, they are offensive, and they are contrary to everything that this president, this attorney general and Department of Justice stands for. They will not be tolerated.”

The only ones really responsible for the idea that Islam is “a religion of violence or with a tendency toward violence” are the Muslims who act violently and justify their violence by quoting the Quran. That isn’t “bigotry.” It’s the truth.

This comes fresh on the heels of my recent WND column, “Obama’s Department of Shariah,” describing how the DOJ is actively pursing cases to gain special privileges for Muslims. In case after case, the Department of Justice’s pursuit of the Shariah is surpassed only by that of the Supreme Council of Al-Azhar, the most prestigious institution in Sunni Islam.

How can Obama enforce the blasphemy laws of the Shariah (do not criticize, offend or speak truthfully about Islam) and order the killing of Imam Awlaki? Think about that.

Banning study of the religious motivation of Muslim terrorists has been a cornerstone of this national-security policy throughout the Obama administration, but Obama orders the executions of those who are proselytizing for and advancing what they present as pure Islam, authentic Islam.

What is this policy? Perhaps Obama prefers the stealth jihad, and the violent jihad only calls attention to the true nature of Islamic law. Incoherent is a best-case scenario explanation on this, but I do not believe that. In my book “The Post-American Presidency: The Obama Administration’s War On America,” I give the details of his pro-Islam leanings from the beginning of his career. And now as president, on foreign policy, he has aided and abetted the overthrow of secular governments. Libya, like Tunisia and Egypt, is heading toward becoming an Islamic state. His anti-Israel policies have led to the increased isolation of the tiny Jewish state, making it a ripe target for Islamic imperialists and devout Muslims.

And his Department of Justice is on the offense against America. While doing research for my book “Stop the Islamization of America: A Practical Guide to the Resistance,” I discovered some startling information about the full extent of Muslim Brotherhood infiltration in the Department of Justice and its brazen pro-Muslim activities, including the creation of Muslim-majority legislative districts. And when I inquired for documentation related to these activities, the DOJ’s response to me indicated that the agency’s ties with Islamic supremacist groups are far more extensive than anyone has realized. Nelson Hermilla of the DOJ responded, telling me that my request involved 14,100 documents that I could only get by paying $1,400.

It is a bombshell that there would be more than 14,000 documents identified as a result of the FOIA request I made to the Department of Justice. I made a relatively isolated request on a narrow topic the Civil Rights Division really doesn’t even have direct jurisdiction over (“Muslim outreach”), and they come up with over 14,000 documents.

Hermilla complained that “it is not clear in what manner the collection of all five-year’s records might contribute to the general public understanding.” That they would challenge the “public interest” aspect of my request is also astounding. Given the recent coverage of the DOJ’s scuttling of the prosecution of CAIR officials in the Holy Land Foundation Hamas funding case, and its advocacy for the Muslim schoolteacher who demanded a month off to go to Mecca and was given $75,000 in a settlement, their claim is flimsy.

Hermilla is flouting the law by making me wait for eight months now since my first request, making a mockery of Obama’s promise to run a transparent administration and suppressing information that is critical for the American public to know. They still have not turned over any of these documents.

Concurrently, DOJ whistleblower J. Christian Adams has revealed that “all 10 new hires to the Justice Department’s Criminal Section have far-left resumes.” Every hire Holder is making is one that America will have to live with long after Obama is gone. They have put in place the legal apparatus to pursue a treasonous agenda.

The American people should demand that the next president prosecute the Muslim Brotherhood co-conspirators and pledge to purge their operatives in the Department of Justice, Department of State and Department of Defense.

Obama ‘Can’t Wait’ for the Rule of Law

President Obama’s proclamation on Monday that he
“can’t wait” for congressional action to help underwater homeowners raises two
questions.

If he already had the legal authority to take action,
then why did he wait?

Some may frame the second question this way: does
Obama’s plan exceed his constitutional authority? Perhaps the better way to ask
the second question is whether the Obama plan is unlawful.

Either way, I can’t wait for Congress to conduct some
oversight hearings before the plan kicks in. This isn’t just a figurative slap
in the face to both Congress and the rule of law; this is a kick in the
groin.

Ignoring the Constitution is so liberating for Mr.
Obama that he intends to do it on a “regular basis.”
The subtitle to Emily Miller’s piece at The Washington
Times
following the announcement of Obama’s “can’t wait” plan is “President unveils
lawless scheme to bypass Congress with executive orders.”

The term “lawless” is sometimes used in common
parlance the same way we use “unlawful,” but its real meaning is “not subject
to, or controlled by, the law.”

If we were to deem the president’s actions as not
subject to, nor controlled by, the law, then we are partly to blame. If we fail
to even recognize government lawbreaking when and where it occurs, we get what
we deserve.

If, however, we were to take the view that the
president’s actions are in fact supposed to be governed and restricted by the
law, and that Mr. Obama’s actions not consistent with the law are therefore
unlawful, then we have a chance of preserving liberty. The rule of law protects
liberty; abuse of the rule of law erodes liberty.

President Obama and his administration have engaged in
years of lawbreaking. Mr. Obama unlawfully used TARP money so that the
government obtained ownership interests in Chrysler and General Motors. He
ignored the War Powers Act in deploying the military machine to Libya. When
Congress refused to pass the DREAM Act, he implemented portions of it via
executive order.

His contempt for the rule of law has had a
trickle-down effect into federal administrative bureaucracies such as the
Environmental Protection Agency and the National Labor Relations Board. Even
his Department of Justice has shown contempt for the rule of
law.

Democratic representatives Jim Moran and Jesse
Jackson, Jr. recently urged — on camera, in fact — that President Obama
implement portions of the Obama jobs bill that never made it through
Congress.

These are members of Congress advocating for more
lawbreaking because they know they have a president who is willing to break —
indeed, has broken — the law governing his office and limiting its powers. So
much for our system of checks and balances.

They also know that the patsy liberal media don’t care
about these things unless the unconstitutional lawbreaking is done by
Republicans.

The Constitution is broad in its sweep, but is
specific about certain functions of government. Congress makes the laws. When
Congress doesn’t pass a law, the president can’t pick up his bat and ball like
an angry juvenile.

We are hearing more and more from the left that the
president must do administratively what Congress refuses to do legislatively.
These are not mere words of frustration. They are words of an ideology that is
dangerously inconsistent with American ideals.

The calls from the left to violate the Constitution
are protected by the First Amendment. It is when they are implemented by the
president that they become lawbreaking. The Constitution, you see, governs
government.

Mark Levin on his radio show Monday night played clips
of the Obama “can’t wait” speech and asked listeners to envision a foreign
dictator speaking in English. That was quite an effective way to make the point
that in America we don’t do the sort of things Obama said he “can’t wait” to
do.

America will not lapse into a dictatorship; we won’t
let that happen. But the dictatorial aspects of the Obama administration must
be called out for what they are: lawbreaking.

Harry Truman onced claimed that there were emergency
circumstances during the Korean War to use his commander-in-chief powers to
unilaterally stop a steel union strike. His effort, though, was defeated in theYoungstown Sheet and Tube Company v. Sawyer case.

Justice Robert Jackson, writing a concurring opinion in
the case, said this about claims of unrestricted executive power: “Such power
either has no beginning or it has no end. If it exists, it need submit to no
legal restraint. I am not alarmed that it would plunge us straightway into
dictatorship, but it is at least a step in that wrong
direction.”

Obama’s “can’t wait” plan is another example of how
the Constitution does not run on automatic pilot. It must be enforced
on government.

If Congress responds weakly or passively to this kick
in the groin, then they are as much the problem as Mr. Obama.

Mark Fitzgibbons is co-author
with Richard Viguerie of the e-pamphlet “The Law That Governs Government:
Reclaiming The Constitution From Usurpers And Society’s Biggest
Lawbreaker.”

Obama: 1, Informed Public: 0

“The Statistical Abstract of the
United States, published since 1878, is the authoritative and
comprehensive summary of statistics on the social, political, and economic
organization of the United States.” That is how the Abstract describes
itself. Click on this New York Postinfographic to
get a feel some of the data in the Abstract.

I first encountered the Abstract in 1979
while killing time in the college library. I was blown away. I had no idea such
a thing existed: an entire book, a thick one, full of nothing but tables of data
– relevant data. Instead of a little snippet or partial fact, theAbstract provided the whole context. You could find, for example, what
the federal government actually spent, over history and in each category, in
current dollars, inflation-adjusted dollars and as fractions of Gross Domestic
Product.

Your knowledge of the world no longer had to rely on
what 20 seconds CBS decided to quote from Senator X.

“What I did in the book, as I’ve done in some earlier
books, is say, ‘Look, these arguments that we get into, be it about poverty, or
race, or education, or infant mortality, or housing or whatever, people are
ignoring the central numbers on these things.’ You get the rhetoric of activists
on either side and they are flailing around with this number or that number, but
the reader, the observer, the participant rarely gets census reports, he doesn’t
get the reports from the Bureau of Labor Statistics, he doesn’t sit down for a
week with the statistical abstract of the United States, he doesn’t get
business indicators. So I designed 125 little, sort of, pocket-size charts. I
made them lean and mean and just run them in a simple column so people –because
people can get a little turned off by too many
numbers.”

I happen to be a person who is not turned off by too
many numbers. In fact, I like looking things up myself, rather than relying on a
middleman to interpret for me. I would spend hours at the library looking things
up in the Abstract, since it could not be checked out. I spent
countless nickels and dimes copying pages from it to take home for further
analysis. One year I bought my own copy of the Abstract. They came out
every year.

Then came the internet. The Abstract was
right at my fingertips! I could even download the tables directly in Excel and
calculate to my heart’s content: averages, trends, comparing time periods,
etc.

Here is what I encountered on the web site of theAbstract this morning:

“The U.S. Census Bureau is terminating the collection
of data for the Statistical Compendia program effective October 1, 2011. The
Statistical Compendium program is comprised of the Statistical Abstract of the
United States and its supplemental products – – the State and Metropolitan Area
Data Book and the County and City Data Book. In preparation for the Fiscal Year
2012 (FY 2012) budget, the Census Bureau did a comprehensive review of a number
of programs and had to make difficult proposals to terminate and reduce a number
of existing programs in order to acquire funds for higher priority programs. The
decision to propose the elimination of this program was not made lightly. To
access the most current data, please refer to the organizations cited in the
source notes for each table of the Statistical
Abstract.”

Out of the $3.6 trillion the government spends, the
Census Bureau thought the relative pennies it spends on collecting and
disseminating data about the government itself and the country at large were
among the most expendable.

Almost no one wants to cut government spending as much
as I do. Ron Paul made a good start. But if we live in a world where our federal
government spends one of every four dollars, and regulates virtually every
aspect of our lives and businesses, it is a matter of democracy that we
have that data. If government ever gets out of the business of trying to
engineer the economy and society, I can relax about the Abstract. But
that is not the world we live in now.

At the very moment our government is trying to do more
than ever, it is informing us less than ever.

When our President is intent on spreading the wealth,
it is imperative that we have an idea of how that wealth is actually spread, how
much the government already takes, etc. If someone says the rich pay lower tax
rates than their secretaries, how will we be able to check
that?

I’ve been worried about this for some time: the
government would start either manipulating the data or hiding it altogether.
Eliminating the Abstract is not just a matter of crimping the mirth of
data hobbyists like me; it is ominous. It is hiding the truth. It is
Soviet-like. It is a short step from airbrushing people out of photos. TheAbstract has been around for 133 years, or about a century longer than
the Department of Education has.

It is not often (I would say never) that you will find
me agreeing with Paul
Krugman and Ezra
Klein. But on this, saving the Abstract, I’m with
them. You can also read what Robert Samuelson had to say about ithere.

I read their warnings, but did not take them
seriously. I thought the Abstract would be saved, when push came to
shove. But it is now October 18. The Census Bureau terminated data collection
October 1. It has already happened. This is not good.

Obama on Occupy Wall Street: ‘We Are on Their Side’

Daniel Halper

October 18, 2011 3:02 PM

In an interview that will be aired tonight on ABC News, President Obama continues to express his commitment to the Occupy Wall Street protesters.

“The most important thing we can do right now is those of us in leadership letting people know that we understand their struggles and we are on their side, and that we want to set up a system in which hard work, responsibility, doing what you’re supposed to do, is rewarded,” Obama tells ABC News. “And that people who are irresponsible, who are reckless, who don’t feel a sense of obligation to their communities and their companies and their workers that those folks aren’t rewarded.”

The president also compares the protesters to the Tea Party. “In some ways, they’re not that different from some of the protests that we saw coming from the Tea Party,” Obama says. “Both on the left and the right, I think people feel separated from their government. They feel that their institutions aren’t looking out for them.”

“Those of you who are watching certain news channels on which I’m not very popular, and you see folks waving tea bags around,[“] Obama said, “let me just remind them that I am happy to have a serious conversation about how we are going to cut our health care costs down over the long term, how we are going to stabilize Social Security.”

FBI begins recording call-ins

Next time you call a talk radio station, beware: The FBI may be listening.

According to WMAL.com,
“The FBI has awarded a $524,927 contract to a Virginia company to record as much
radio news and talk programming as it can find on the Internet. … The FBI says
it is not playing Big Brother by policing the airwaves, but rather seeking
access to what airs as potential evidence.”

The agency’s reasons for recording all these radio programs don’t get any
clearer as the news report goes on. No doubt that is intentional.

That was Rush Limbaugh’s advice to a caller who was clinging to hope that theformer Alaska governor would finally enter the 2012 Presidential
race.

“You’ve got practical things like filing deadlines coming up, some are within
a week now,” Rush explained, “so I think it’s time to move on. I think it’s time
to let go and move on” (FREE
audio).

Ken
Hoffman at the Houston Chronicle complained that, “Limbaugh is now calling
first lady Michelle Obama … ‘Moo-Chelle Obama.’ Even for El Rushbo, that’s
stupid and insensitive. Limbaugh reportedly earns $38 million a year and lives
in a beachfront mansion in Palm Beach, Fla. He can’t afford a mirror?”

Michael Savage

This week, Michael Savage labeled Barack Obama a “lifetime Marxist” and
renewed concerns about his eligibility to serve as president.

He explained to listeners: Obama is “a man who refuses to show a valid birth
certificate, a man who applies for college aid as a foreign student and then
denies he’s foreign, a man who has a Social Security number from a state he’s
never even lived in.” (FREE
audio).

Savage also declared: “The second Bolshevik revolution is beginning in the
United States of America, egged on by our first communist president and his
cronies. Obama is using the rabble in the gutters to draw attention away from
the ‘Fast and Furious’ Mexican gunrunning scandal, and all the other scandals in
this administration”:

(Column continues below)

Sean Hannity

The New York Times shadowed Sean Hannity as part of a story about Fox News’
15th anniversary, and were
forced to concede: “Despite the inflammatory rhetoric he instigates, Mr.
Hannity is good-natured and humble in person, as interested in his children’s
tennis matches as in Mitt Romney’s foreign policy positions. He rarely agrees to interviews, and
when he did last week, he said he did not read negative articles about him, or
even the friendly Twitter account all about his abundant head of hair.”

Newt Gingrich joined Hannity on the air to analyze the most recent GOP candidate’s debate, both his own performance and
those of the other potential Republican nominees (FREE
audio).

Mark Levin

“These debates are starting to bore me,” Mark Levin told listeners this week.
He complained that there were too many participants, and none of them will dare
take on Mitt Romney (FREE
audio).

Speaking of Romney, Levin slammed New Jersey Gov. Chris Christie for
endorsing him. Levin feels neither of these men are “true” conservatives, and he
is tired of hearing that “conservatives can’t win” (FREE
audio).

Laura Ingraham

Two Republican governors offered Ingraham different takes on who could take
the White House in 2012.

Mississippi Gov. Haley Barbour told Laura and her listeners that Herman Cain
would “sweep the South” if he is the GOP nominee (FREE audio).

However, former Pennsylvania Gov. Ed Rendell told
her, “If the election were held today, Mitt Romney would defeat Barack Obama
in Pennsylvania – a state the president won by roughly 10 points in 2008.”

Rendell warned the party not to select a “wacky” nominee, and stick with
somebody “competent.” He added, “Sometimes I think the Republican Party has a death wish.”

“I actually agree with you on that,” Ingraham replied. “In many ways I thinkthe Republicans can screw things up easily.”

Glenn Beck

Glenn Beck expanded his business empire this week, announcing the launch of
his “1791” clothing line.

Beck
explained, “The main thrusts of the 1791 line are to remember where we came
from as Americans … and to restore values and efforts that have made America
great.”

Beck sided with Hank Williams Jr. this week, after the singer/songwriter got in
trouble for making a clumsy analogy that mentioned “Hitler” and “Obama” (but
contrary to what’s been reported, he didn’t compare the two.) Beck played
excerpts of Williams’ new song “Keep the Change,” and condemned ESPN and his
former employers at Fox News for throwing Williams under the bus (FREE
webcam).

And now, from the left side of the dial …

Did you ever think you’d live to see a cable news host question the
“blackness” of a potential president?

That’s what happened when Al Sharpton and Prof. Karen Hunter struggled to
make sense of Herman Cain’s campaign for the Republican nomination (FREE
audio).

Weirder still, the producer of progressive Stephanie Miller’s radio show made a bizarre on-air suggestion that Cain
was an anti-Semite. It was so outrageous even Miller expressed her embarrassment
and tried to change the subject.

While these outbursts are painful to listen to, they reveal the unprincipled
desperation of people whose worldview is crumbling before their eyes. That’s
probably the only redeeming social value these radio programs
have.